Revd Phil White and his Walk for Kenya

By the time you read this, Phil White, Priest in Charge of St James' Church, should have completed his sponsored walk in aid of work he supports in Bungoma Diocese in Kenya. On May 25th and 26th he is walking 20 miles each day, from Bempton to Scarborough and Scarborough to Robin Hoods Bay, to publicise what is being achieved in Kenya and to raise funds for the Wycliffe Centre for Mission, Theology and Development near Bungoma town.

At the Seamer Mothers' Union branch meeting, Phil showed film and photos from his last trip. He has been involved with the work of the Anglican Church in Bungoma since spending three months there during a sabbatical in 2006, when he lived in the Bishop's house and led lay training seminars throughout the Diocese. Since then he has been back every year for two or three weeks to continue the training link. Bishop Eliud Wabukala has recently been appointed Archbishop of Kenya, but will not take up his new post until the autumn, so arrangements for Phil and his team to go on their trip this summer remain in place.

The aims of the visit are to promote understanding (in Phil's words, 'To learn from another culture about what it means to be Christians, as Africans, in the Anglican tradition') and to give educational and training input that will be of long term benefit to the churches there along with practical support that enables them to be self sufficient. Most of the training will be delivered at the Wycliffe Centre, where previous visits have helped to provide electricity, water supplies, sewerage, glazing and a basic theological library. The Centre is now close to self-sufficiency.

We thoroughly enjoyed Phil's talk, not least the film of joyful Mothers' Union members singing and dancing at worship. When working they wear their Mothers' Union uniform dresses, of which they are very proud. They provided much of the hospitality Phil and his group enjoyed. Everywhere members of the team were treated as honoured guests, and given the best food available—which they had to eat in order not to offend, even though they knew their hosts were making sacrifices to provide it. Bungoma is, however, a comparatively fertile, well-watered region, and the staple food, a maize-meal 'porridge', is readily available.

People in general have very little and life is very basic, but their Christian faith is joyful and exuberant. Services on Sundays can last for three or four hours! In just over ten years the number of churches in Bungoma has risen from 88 to more than 250. There are only 65 clergy, but 750 lay Readers and Evangelists, and the Wycliffe Centre will provide an invaluable resource for ongoing training.

Please pray for the visit of Phil and his team this coming August, for the Wycliffe Centre, for Bungoma Diocese and for Bishop Eliud as he prepares to take up his new appointment as Archbishop. He and his family need our prayers too because his son was killed in an accident on the dangerous Kenyan roads earlier this year.

Please pray too for the work of the Mothers' Union in Kenya as a whole, where there are 400,000 members and a huge variety of social, educational and economic projects in hand.

If you would like to make a donation towards the work in Bungoma via Phil, please give it to Mary, who will pass it on to him.

At our next meeting, on June 9th, Jeannette White, Phil's wife, will be giving an illustrated talk about her walk on the Great Wall of China in aid of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.